2009 so far

As the summer movie season winds down (although some anticipated films remain this month, mainly Tarantino's Inglorious Basterds, Miyazaki's Ponyo and Chan Wook Park's Thist) and the more serious fall season begins, I figured it was time to look back at the year in film so far. This will also sort of make up for how lazy I've been with this thing all summer. I haven't seen as many films as I would have liked so far this year (somewhere around 25), and I still haven't gotten to many highly regarded releases, including Tetro and The Hurt Locker, but here's what I have seen.
Top 10 (yes, some of these, including the top two, are technically 2008 releases, but they weren't released anywhere near me until 2009 and I don't really care about that sort of thing
1. Hunger
A masterpiece where every motion is absolutely necessary and every little tic says something new about the characters and their situation. The long conversation in the middle is a stunning centerpiece and acts as the highlight of Michael Fassbender's masterful performance, but Steve McQueen's stunning debut has no weak moments.
2. Revanche
Gotz Spielmann's immaculately shot noirish drama features great performances from it's entire cast as the tension continues to rise until the properly ambiguous ending.
3. In The Loop
Simply put, this is the funniest film of the year and one of the funniest of the decade.
4. Tokyo
I think somewhat higher of this one now than I did at first, especially the section directed by Leos Carax. It seems funnier and more poignant having actually seen one of his features (the great Lovers On The Bridge). The other segments are also very strong.
5. 500 Days Of Summer
I normally hate romantic comedies and I have it this high. That should mean something to you.
6. The Limits Of Control
Jim Jarmusch's stunningly beautiful (courtesy of the great cinematographer Christopher Doyle), critically misunderstood film may go down as one of his finest.
7. Star Trek
Sure the plot is nonsense and the villain is weak, but I don't think I've had more fun at a movie this year
8. Watchmen (Directors Cut Only)
The theatrical cut of the film wasn't necessarily bad, but the characters really weren't as developed as they could have been and the editing seemed off. The director's cut, which adds 24 minutes of footage, almost entirely in early character moments, fixes a lot of this. Malin Akerman and Mathew Goode are still pretty bad, the music choices are still laughable and Snyder still can't create a good action sequences, but more of the comic is here, and that is necessary.
9. Moon
Duncan Jones' debut may try a bit too hard to emulate 2001 and Solaris, but this leads to some great visuals and a morally interesting tale anchored by Sam Rockwell's great performance.
10. District 9
The sudden and unexplained shift away from the documentary style of the first half is a problem, as the second half becomes more of a simple action movie (I understand that it was necessary for plot reasons, but if the first half was written that way, they should have kept it going), but it is a damn good action movie, so for now it makes the list.
HM: Adventureland, Brothers Bloom, Up, Bruno, Sin Nombre

Bottom 5
5. Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince
While it is not the worst film in the series, David Yates' second entry takes one of the better books and turns it into something that is, ultimately, too dull to work on its own.
4. Taken
I know that this sleeper hit isn't exactly the type of film designed for me, but I find it somewhat depressing that this type of film is designed for anyone.
3. Public Enemies
I have to give Mann credit for trying something different, but I just don't think it succeeds. The script tries too hard to both romanticize and humanize Dillinger, never giving us anything resembling a full character. Like Heat, he tries to create a full criminal world, but, for one reason or another, it just doesn't work this time (the lack of De Niro and Pacino in the main roles of course being one of those reasons). The photo-realist, docudrama style also prevents it from reaching the stylistic level of his best film shot in digital, Collateral.
2. Angels and Demons
I don't like Ron Howard. I don't like Dan Brown. If I had paid for this one (the projector in the movie I meant to see was broken, so we got free tickets to this one), I would have been even angrier.
1. Wolverine
My original opinion still stands. This film is completely worthless. It provides nothing new about the character except a series of shockingly dull action set pieces.
There were a lot of simply mediocre films I've seen this year, but none that really deserved to be here

Pitchfork Fest

At the very beginning, I promised that I would occasionally do a music review in here. Nine months later, I guess it's time for the first one. This weekend I attended Pitchfork Music Festival in Chicago, which, through a laid-back atmosphere, cheap tickets and consistently solid lineups has evolved into a hip alternative to Lollapalooza. Pitchfork will never be able to afford headliners like Lolla 2008 (Radiohead, Wilco, Rage, Kanye and Nine Inch Nails), but when the headliners for both festivals were announced this year, it became pretty clear which one I'd be attending. I honestly wouldn't pay a cent to see Lollapalooza's pathetic lineup of Depeche Mode, Tool, The Killers, Jane's Addiction, Beastie Boys and Jane's Addiction. There are some great below-the-line artists (Animal Collective, Lou Reed, Andrew Bird, Fleet Foxes, Portugal. The Man, etc), but a 3-day pass to Lolla is over $200, while three days at Pitchfork was $75, the price of a one-day ticket at Lollapalooza, and with Built to Spill, The National and The Flaming lips as headliners, I knew I would get my money's worth.
On Friday night, the festival eschewed the recent tradition of the artists playing their defining album (in recent years, the festival was treated to full versions of Sonic Youth's Daydream Nation, Public Enemy's It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back and Mission of Burma's Vs.), in favor the band's playing set-lists chosen by fan vote. The night opened with Chicago post-rock legends Tortoise, who displayed all the proficiency found in their studio work, but lacked the emotion and energy to make it a truly memorable show. Also, people kept tossing around Beach Balls, which seemed kind of idiotic during an experimental post-rock show. Next came Yo La Tengo, a band I've never really liked. Thankfully, after the first couple songs, me and the friend I was with ran into another friend who had just returned from a month in Europe who shared our distaste for the band, and we spent their set sitting down and talking behind the sound tent. We could still hear the music, and it became evident that there were some issues with the sound system, but the music we did here was pretty awful, so none of us cared at the moment. After this came post-punk legends The Jesus Lizard, playing their first hometown show since their 1999 breakup. Vocalist David Yow brought a perfect amount of energy and insanity and they clearly hadn't missed a step in their decade apart, but I didn't have a great view because we had moved as close to the main stage as possible so we could see Built to Spill (these two stages were essentially right next to each other). I think this was the right decision. Built to Spill is one of my favorite bands of the nineties, and seeing Doug Martsch work his magic up close was one of the highlights of the festival. They didn't play a lot of my favorite songs (no "Time Trap" "I Would Hurt a Fly," or "Broken Chairs,") but they closed with "Carry The Zero," which is probably my favorite track of theirs. They are definitely a band I would recommend seeing live at the first possible opportunity. Overall, Friday night had it's issues, mainly the fact that there were only two food vendors, absurd lines for drink tickets and bathrooms and it was far too cold, but the bands were good (for the most part) and I had fun.

Saturday opened with Cymbals Eat Guitars, a Built To Spill-like band that has exploded onto the scene with praise from blogs across the board in recent months. I'm a fan of their album "Why There Are Mountains," and their show was OK, but they clearly aren't ready to be playing in front of such a huge audience yet. I spent the next couple hours just wandering around and taking in the festival, not staying long enough at any one set to write about it (of the bands I saw during this time, I'd say the sample of Plants and Animals that I heard was strongest). I ran into some more friends, and spent the rest of day with them, first going to see The Pains of Being Pure At Heart, who sound like a mediocre Jesus and Mary Chain knock-off in studio and even worse live. After wandering around for a while in search of free stuff (there was a lot of it), I was begrudgingly dragged to Yeasayer, whom I saw and disliked at Lollapalooza last year. Thankfully, that dislike was unwarranted, and they put on a pretty good show. They had a lot more energy, the crowd was really into it and the weather was perfect. It had been cloudy and humid all day, and then it started raining in the middle of one of their most energetic tracks, which made the crowd even wilder. We then saw part of DOOM's set, which didn't seem that great and was, by most accounts, a major disappointment, but chose to stay in place for a better view of Beirut. Unfortunately, through a small communication breakdown, we wound up moving and looking for other friends, and, by the time we got back, the crowd around Beirut was full. It wasn't all bad, since we then decided to move as close as possible to the main stage for The National and just listen to Beirut instead of actually watching. It seemed like a good show, but it was kind of hard to tell. Before describing The National's show, I should point out a few things: it was my third time seeing them in about a year, they are one of my two or three favorite bands of this decade and they were my favorite band playing at the festival. Of the three times I've seen them, this was, by far, the best show. Not only were we in the third row, but the set was much longer than the others, and another year of buzz and increased popularity has seemingly given them the right levels of confidence and energy to really control the audience. Matt Berninger's booming vocals were at their best and the rhythm section was a rock-solid as always. Their were a few more issues with the sound, but overall it was a near perfect show and a great way to end the night. Many of the issues from Friday were gone by Saturday. The food and rink lines weren't nearly as long and the weather was much better. Unfortunately, the bathroom problem was still there, but they brought in about 20 more portables by Sunday, which helped solve that issue.The National

On Sunday, I got their just in time to be somewhat disappointed by Frightened Rabbit. The set from the Scottish indie-pop band wasn't necessarily bad, but it had a certain been-there-done-that feel to it, with nothing to separate it from any other indie-pop show I've seen. Next, I caught part of Blitzen Trapper's set, and they were pretty good, but I'm not sure I loved them as much as some others did. I caught parts of sets from Killer Whales (meh), Pharoahe Monch (I don't know hip-hop at all, but I thought he was good) and The Thermals (meh), before settling down for The Walkmen. We had a pretty awful view, but the sound was fine and they were good, so we enjoyed ourselves. After this, we just turned to the other stage for M83. I've never been a big fan, but the French electronic shoegazers do put on one hell of a show. Unfortunately, by this point, the main section in front of the stage was already entirely full of Flaming Lips fans, and they, for the most part, couldn't care less, which took some of the fun out of M83. After this, everyone faced a hard decision. The A stage (where M83 had just played) and the C stage were basically right next to each other. Grizzly Bear was about to come onto the C stage, but Flaming Lips were next on A, as soon as Grizzly Bear finished. Anyone with a good view of the A stage but no view of C (myself included) could either give up a good seat to rock's greatest spectacle or miss out on a great band. I chose to see Grizzly Bear and try to get the best view possible for the Lips. Grizzly Bear's latest album, Veckatimest is an early contender for album of the year, and their show didn't disappoint, even though the sound problems became a real issue and forced them to play without any monitors and varying levels. Finally, the weekend ended with a show from alternative rock's greatest spectacle, The Flaming Lips. It opened with most of the band members walking out of a giant on-screen (censored) vagina and Wayne Coyne running above the audience in his trademark giant hamster ball, and they pretty much maintained that level of gloriously giddy surrealism throughout. They also sort of participated in the write-the-night vote, but at various points, Coyne showed a sort of disdain for the list, playing the 66th most requested song and a few that nobody requested at all and some new tracks. They closed with full sing-along versions of "Yoshimi," "She Don's Use Jelly" and "Do You Realize??" and it was obvious that everyone in the crowd absolutely loved it. The show also featured bizarre video projections, tons of balloons and streamers and about two dozen people in animal costumes on stage. There really is nothing like a Flaming Lips concert, even a somewhat minimal festival version (their set was only 90 minutes, which is much shorter than their normal shows), and it was the perfect way to end a great weekend. So, for anyone who lives in Chicago, I would make Pitchfork a priority next summer.The Flaming Lips

500 Days Of Summer

There are very few phrases that will almost always make me avoid a film at all cost. "Torture porn," "based on the hit Broadway musical," "tearjerker" and "starring Paris Hilton" are all certainly among them, along with "romantic comedy." Outside of Annie Hall (and some of Allen's other films if they can be accurately described as such), I can never think of a rom-com that I actually enjoy, which is why it felt so strange to actually be excited by the trailer for 500 Days Of Summer. A romantic comedy that actually looks funny? And smart? And doesn't feature Mathew Mcconaughey or Katherine Heigl? Holy shit. Add in the extremely positive buzz and Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Zooey Deschanael as the leads and it became one of my most anticipated films of the summer, so when I found out that I could get free tickets to an advance screening, I jumped at the chance. Thankfully, it met every expectation.
The Annie Hall comment above was no accident, and it's not just the highly literate, fully formed characters, the sense of humor and the repeated references to the films of Ingmar Bergman. While this film is not as insightful when it comes to relationships as Allen's masterpiece, it is the closest any film this generation has come. Tom (Gordon-Levitt) is a writer at a greeting card company, and he believes very strongly in love, fate and finding "the one," which the narrator says was caused by "listening to too much depressing British music and a complete misinterpretation of The Graduate." Summer (Deschanael) is the new receptionist at the office, and she believes that love does not exist, likening it to Santa Clause. On day 1, Tom sees her, and falls immediately head-over-heels, but this isn't where the film begins. First-time director Marc Webb and screenwriters Scott Neustadter and Michael Weber jump around through the 500 days of the title, showing us all of the ups and downs of their relationship, usually in just the right spot. They open around day 300, right after Tom and Summer break up, as Tom's two best friends and his little sister, who is shown to be a far more emotionally mature person than he, try to console him. We see their relationship begin, and even though she always insists that they are just friends, Tom falls in love. This is juxtaposed with post-breakup Tom falling into a pit of depression, trying to find a reason for their breakup, quitting his job and blaming our societal issues with love on "greeting cards, pop songs and the movies." Around day 30, they first have sex, which is followed by a rather amusing, semi-surreal song-and-dance number. After quitting his job, Tom goes to the movies, which, in what is by far the film's best sequence, leads to shot-for-shot homages to the final scene in Persona and the first chess-scene in The Seventh Seal, with Tom and Summer taking the various roles. Later, after meeting at a mutual friend's wedding, for the first time since their break-up, Summer invites Tom to a party at her house, and we see it in split-screen, one side showing what Tom wants to happen and the other showing us reality. Throughout the film, they discuss art, music, film, architecture and every other thing that people hide behind, but they can never really come together and discuss what is happening to them and the state of their relationship, because Tom is right, the conveniences of modernity do stop us from being able to really open up, and unless two people are absolutely perfect for each other, that will not change.
500 Days of Summer is the best American film I've seen this year, but it does have one or two flaws. The first act is one of the most consistently hilarious half-hours I've seen in a film, so, as the second act begins to settle into serious-mode, it slows down a bit. The film manages to avoid most of the Sundance-cliches. It is quirky, but, for the most part, this adds to our love of the characters and is not just for the sake of being quirky. The one exception may be Tom's little sister. Her scenes are pretty amusing, but it almost always feels very forced and contrived when an adult character talks to a child for relationship advice. In all honesty, those are my only complaints. Webb generally avoids the visual flair and lets the characters be the centers of attention, and they are great characters. Both actors give career-best performances (at least from what I've seen from them, which, in Deschanel's case, does not include her widely acclaimed work in David Gordon Green's All The Real Girls) It is impossible not to fall in love with Summer, and not just because she's played by the equally impossible not-to-love Deschanel. She is just an incredibly fun and refreshing presence, plus she loves The Beatles' underrated "Octopus Garden," which had been stuck in my head all week. Tom is the center of this film, and Gordon-Levitt does a great job of humanizing a character that, in the hands of a lesser actor, probably would have come off as just depressing, and maybe kind of creepy. The film's use of music must also be mentioned. It is full of clips from and references to bands that I love, including The Jesus and Mary Chain, Pixies, Belle and Sebastian, The Smiths, Feist, Spoon and Wolfmother. All of this, plus the intelligent and humorous script adds up to what will undoubtedly be remembered as one of the year's best films. 500 Days Of Summer, more than anything else, is a very modern, very great Woody Allen film, and that should be enough to get you to see it when it comes out.
Rating (out of ****): ****

Almanac Of Fall

There's something kind of strange about going through a filmmaker's work in reverse. It allows you to see the evolution of their style, what they thought worked and what failed. While not entirely intentional, this is basically what I've been doing with Bela Tarr, ever since I first saw Werckmeister Harmonies last year, which is now my favorite film (I only saw 2007's wonderful Man From London a few weeks ago, but that was because it wasn't released here until then). In fact, after watching his vastly underseen (even in the realm of Tarr, whose films are all vastly underseen) 1982 film Almanac of Fall this afternoon, I'm confident that I can now call him my favorite filmmaker. Period. Almanac is an interesting film, forming the bridge between his supposedly realist earlier films (remember, I haven't seen them), and the more difficult, allegorical films to come. It's also the only color feature I've seen from him, and his skill with the full color palate nearly reaches his abilities with black and white. The political allegory and Tarkovsky-esque camera work of his later films is here, but in a younger form, and his other influences, especially Bergman and Antonioni (and, maybe, to a much lesser extent Fellini) are more obvious in this film than in his subsequent works.
The entire film takes place in one large, dilapidated mansion. The outside world is barely shown, only intruding for two brief moments of violence. There are only five characters, and the entire film consists of their interactions. The house is owned by Hedi, a woman of about 60 and her 30 year old son Janos. There is also Hedi's nurse, Anna, who lives with her lover, Miklos. Miklos has recently invited his poor friend Tibor, a teacher to move in as well. The five of them spend the two-hour run-time manipulating and hurting each other, all of them trying to gain money and power over the others, all blaming the others for their problems. Hedi and Anna need each other, but they are always competing, and neither is comfortable with the other. Janos wants Anna, but is far too lazy to accomplish anything. Miklos is an angry man, abusing Anna and manipulating Hedi against the others. Tibor owes money to an undisclosed figure, who sends two men in to beat him. This is shown from the floor's point of view, as the entire sequence (of course done in one virtuoso shot) is shown happening on top of a glass pane. Eventually Tibur pawns Hedi's valuable gold bracelet, which further pulls everyone apart, and eventually breaks up the group, who demand a sacrificial lamb before they can return to their twisted normalcy.
It must be made clear that this is an unpleasant film. The characters cruelty and actions would seem at home in something by Von Trier, whose debut feature had been released the previous year. This has turned off many critics (many may be an overstatement given the film's obscurity, but that is unimportant), but it is necessary. The chamber-play setup as well as some of the character actions, especially the manipulative relationship between Hedi and Anna, shows Bergman's influence on Tarr. The expressive and always changing color palate was created entirely with artificial light and reminded me a bit of Fellini's Juliet of the Spirits, but this may be a stretch. The loneliness of the characters, as well as their isolation within the frame as the film uses more wide-shots in the second half, recall Antonioni. Some have seen the film as a critique of the family in general, and the isolation of the characters, especially during the requisite dance scene at the end (if you've seen another Tarr film, you know what I'm talking about) does support this, but there is more to it.
The main themes of the film (as well as the pervasive long-takes) are what I've come to expect from Tarr. The characters are all unable to accept responsibility for their actions. Tibur blames his financial woes on the situation around him, even though he was the one who borrowed from a shady character in the first place. Janos blames his lack of work on alcohol, not on his own inherent laziness. Miklos seems to blame his problems on Anna, but in reality, he's just not a good person. Anna sleeps with all three men, but says that society is at fault for any problems that it may cause. Through all of this, Tarr is saying that man is always responsible for his own actions, but, with the events at the end of the film, he is saying that human nature always calls for a scapegoat, even when the problems are everyone's fault. Given the strong political undertones of his later films, this could be interpreted as him (correctly) predicting that, while at the time people blamed communism for their problems, they would eventually blame capitalism, and the cycle would go on, with people only shifting the blame and not actually doing anything for themselves. There are a lot of long takes in this film, with each conversation usually being made up of only one or two shots, but Tarr does no rely on them as heavily as he would later. The camera work here is interesting in a different way, as Tarr and his cinematographers shoot from every angle and distance imaginable, as a way of saying that the actions of the characters, and therefore humanity, may not make any real, logical sense no matter how one looks at them. I would not put Almanac Of Fall on quite the same level as Werckmeister or Satantango, but I think I would rank it third among the master's films, which means that you really should see it as soon as possible.
Rating (out of ****): ****

The Brothers Bloom

Rian Johnson's 2005 debut film, Brick, was a deservedly critically acclaimed piece of neo-noir, taking the world of Dashiell Hammett and moving it into a modern high school. Part of what made it so good was that combination of a world that is familiar because we've all lived it and a world that is familiar because we've grown up watching others live it. I was hoping for something similar when they first announced his follow-up, The Brothers Bloom. I knew it would be a con film, but I hoped there would be a twist. Unless some added quirk and an obvious Wes Anderson influence counts as a twist, my hopes were dashed, but I was not really disappointed in the film as a whole. It's not as good as Brick, which was an exciting, visually fascinating debut, but it is a very fun way to spend a couple hours.
The film opens with a way-too-long prologue telling the story of the titular brothers' first con. We see the younger one, simply called Bloom, as a romantic who is uncomfortable with their actions while the older Stephen plans and predicts everything in advance, and he is always right. The narration is heaviest here (it's really only used early), and it is pretty bad, plus the child actors are unimpressive. Next, we see the adult brothers, Bloom (Adrien Brody) and Stephen (Mark Ruffalo) and their partner Bang-Bang (Rinko Kikuchi, from Babel) at the end of their latest con. Bloom is depressed, and despite Stephen's attempts to keep him, decides to quit. After a few months of hiding in Montenegro, Stephen finds him for one last con, involving eccentric American heiress Penelope, played by Rachel Weisz. Penelope has been alone for most of her life, studying everything and picking up hobbies. Her money is limitless, and she goes through three or four different Lamborghinis in her first ten minutes of screen-time. She is fun and quirky and Bloom quickly falls for her. Under the guise of antique dealing, the group winds up in Prague, and through a complicated, but still perfectly clear (one of the film's strengths is that it doesn't heavily rely on bad expositional dialogue) scheme, they get part of her money and move to Mexico to get the rest. Here, parts of the brothers' pasts and Bloom's feelings for Penelope begin to become an issue, and Bloom begins to wonder how he can get her out of the game.
The film does have issues. There is a lot of really obvious foreshadowing in the beginning, and, despite the stunning locations, I was kind of disappointed in the visuals. Johnson fails to really utilize everything around him, and many of the shots that do work don't come up until the end. There are also some cliche moments in the script, especially when the brothers constantly talk about living an "unwritten life," but the good certainly outweighs the bad in terms of dialogue. The film's sense of irony and some of the camera motions (especially in the way it pans from person to person) come off as Wes Anderson-light. If you added some brighter colors, a bit more irony and replaced Ruffalo and Brody with Owen and Luke Wilson, it would probably be a pretty good Anderson picture, but I love Anderson's work, so this didn't really bug me. Whatever flaws I found were outweighed by the breezy sense of fun and adventure. A large part of this was due to the actors. Brody's character is the "normal" one, and, while he isn't great here, he provides a solid emotional center. Ruffalo gets some juicy monologues, and he does a very good job with them, creating a likable character where a lesser actor would have seemed too sinister. Weisz, who I'm normally not a huge fan of, shows that comedy is one of her strengths, perfectly portraying her character's awkwardness and her transformation into a "normal" person. The real star in this film is Kikuchi. I hated Babel. I think it's one of the worst films of the decade, just the equally bad Crash on a larger scale, but she was very good in her Oscar-nominated role as a Japanese mute. Here, she plays a Japanese mute again, but this time her character exists mainly for laughs, and she gets them. Every little look she gives, even from the background, completely steals the scene, and the audience, at least in my screening, reacted wonderfully to her character.
The film manages to avoid many of the cliches of the con-man film (although some just have to be there) and there are some great bits of dialogue ("My brother writes jobs like dead Russians write novels") and memorable characters. I'm not sure what exactly the film was aspiring to be, but, despite a couple little issues here and there and the fact that it doesn't quite live up to the fantastic poster at the top of this review (seriously, how awesome is that thing?), it works wonderfully as a fun and breezy adventure story.
Rating (out of ****): ***

Terminator Salvation

In recent months, despite the large amount of time I spend on Rottentomatoes, I've grown wary of the Tomatometer. See my recent review of The Limits of Control for a good example of this. I was hoping that the same sentiment would hold for the newest entry in a franchise that helped to define my childhood, Terminator Salvation. I was wrong, and the film's 39% seems about right. I first saw Terminator 2: Judgment Day when I was six or seven (probably a poor decision on someone's part), and while certain things flew over my head, including the various references to the first film, which I didn't see until years later, I still loved it. I watched it again last week in preparation for the fourth film, and it has held up. It's still one of the all-time great action films. I don't think the first film has held up quite as well, but it's still pretty fun. The third film was the first not directed by series creator James Cameron, and it showed. Jonathon Mostow's film wasn't terrible, but doesn't reach the quality of the first two. McG's entry in the series is about half as good as Mostow's. I've been waiting since I was a kid to see the future war between man and machine, and the only thing it did was leave me feeling underwhelmed.
I guess I should have expected this. McG, despite recent successes in television, is still the director of Charlie's Angels, and it was written by the guys who did Catwoman, but the ace cast and the source material gave me hope. This hope was very quickly dashed. The film opens with Marcus Wright (Sam Worthington) on death row in 2003. Before his execution, he agrees to donate his corpse to Cyberdyne systems after meeting an executive named Serena (a bald Helena Bonham Carter). Flash to the future (2018 to be exact), and we meet adult John Conner (Christian Bale), not yet leader of the resistance, who loses a large part of his team in the first of the film's many dull action scenes. Conner (using Bale's far-too-serious Batman voice) goes back to the resistance's submarine headquarters and finds out that they have a plan to destroy Skynet and end the war by changing the system's signals. He also discovers that Skynet has a kill-list, with his name second. First is Kyle Reese (Anton Yelchin), the man he will eventually send back to protect/impregnate his mother in the first film (as for his mother, Linda Hamilton has a voice cameo on a series of tapes that are played to catch up audiences who forgot). We then meet the rest of John's team, including his wife Kate (Bryce Dallas Howard) and right-hand-man, Barnes (Common). Marcus suddenly wakes up in Los Angeles, and after exploring the post-apocalyptic landscape, meets Kyle. They encounter a few giant robots/Transformers rejects who engage them in a series of repetitive, sepia-toned action sequences. Eventually, Skynet captures Kyle, and Marcus runs into Blair Williams (Moon Bloodgood) a pilot for John's team who has been shot down. They head back to the base (in order to keep a PG-13 rating, a sex scene between the two, presumably in this part of the film, was cut, which is stupid, because it muddles the rationale behind their future actions), but before getting there, Marcus steps on a mine. This is where the film's first big twist, you know, the one that's been a major part of every trailer, is revealed. Eventually, Marcus and John attack Skynet's core. Along the way, we get references to the famous lines from the other films and one surprise "cameo" (is it a cameo if it's just a digitally created version of the actor?). There is more violence, and then the movie ends.
Terminator Salvation was not all bad. It's certainly better than Angels & Demons or Wolverine, but it is not good. I can ignore the logic/continuity errors (24 year-old Claire Danes aging into 29 year-old Bryce Dallas Howard, who looks about 24, in the 15 years between the events of T3 and Salvation, as well as switching from vet to doctor who can perform human heart transplants was almost too much), and the special effects were certainly impressive, but the action, which makes up about 80% of the movie is repetitive and dull and the dialogue that makes up the other 20% is a boring mix of cliches and references to past films. Some of the actors, especially Yelchin, who also impressed in Star Trek, and the Australian Worthington, who will be a major star by the end of the year due to his starring role in James Cameron's highly-anticipated Avatar, do a great job with what they have, but the others don't. Common is distractingly bad during his scenes and Bale never leaves his one-note, overly-intense Batman-mode. The emotional moments, which were what separated T2 from most 90s action films, all fall pathetically flat, as none of the relationships are believable or given enough screentime to make us care. Surprisingly enough, I don't think I can really blame this on McG. There are a few good looking shots, and the pacing is perfectly fine, so I'm going to blame it on the writers, John Brancato and Michael Ferris. Bad dialogue and the same action scene constantly repeating itself are what sink this film. The two really good performances (Kyle and Marcus both have roughly equal screentime with John, which helps), the effects and the nostalgia factor save it from being total crap, but I can't recommend this film.
Rating (out of ****): **

The Limits of Control

As a film critic (sort of), do I have the right to grant a director a certain limit of self indulgence if he's never failed me in the past? I think so. Apparently other critics disagree. The Limits Of Control, the latest film from American master Jim Jarmusch, is also the worst-reviewed film of his career, scoring a rather pathetic 26% rating on Rotten Tomatoes. To an extent, I do understand the hatred. While the film is not ideologically complicated, it is a bit difficult to sit through. The entire thing is a few minutes of silence, followed by a short amount of dialogue, repeated for 115 minutes, the main character only says six or seven full sentences, three of which are in the final scene, and the entire thing is obviously more concerned with aesthetic than plot. Conveniently, these are things that I tend to love. Now, it does run a bit long, and there are some clearly overly self-indulgent touches from Jarmusch, but sometimes you just have to accept these things. It's not a perfect film by any means, and it probably won't hold up anywhere near as well as Stranger Than Paradise or Dead Man, but I'm still pretty sure that it's worth seeing.
The characters are not given names, so I'm just going to use the descriptions given by IMDB (which has the film erroneously titled No Limits, No Control). The main character, "The Lone Man," a hired assassin is played by Isaach De Bankole, who has appeared in a few of Jarmusch's films before, but never as a lead. It opens with him meeting the "creole" and "French," who give him a speech on life, and how anyone who thinks they're better than others should go to the cemetery, because then they see what life is: dirt. This idea is constantly repeated throughout. They then give him a matchbook with instructions for his next contact, a man with a violin. He goes to Spain to meet him (the rest of the film takes place in Spain, I'm not sure where the opening took place). He goes to a cafe, orders two espressos in two separate cups (something else that is repeated throughout), and meets the man, who gives him another matchbook, and the cycle goes on. It all sounds rather boring as a description, so I'll just go with the highlights. Tilda Swinton plays a mysterious blonde contact who discusses film, and the idea that the best images in film are the same as our greatest dreams (I'll get to this later). Paz de la Huerta plays a contact who is nude for the entirety of her screentime. I had no problem with this. A contact on a train discusses molecules. John Hurt plays a contact who discusses the nature of Bohemianism and gives Isaach a guitar. Gael Garcia Bernal is a contact who discusses history and myth. Someone is killed (not on screen), and our only real chance to see Isaach's emotions is blurred in shadow, which was probably the right decision. Finally, at the end, Bill Murray plays the target of this convoluted assassination, and he, as others have pointed out, is clearly channeling Dick Cheney, and he discusses power and control. After his mission is over, Isaach cleans up and goes on. We never know who ordered it or why any of this has happened, but I guess it doesn't matter.
I probably shouldn't have spent so much time on plot. It's not that relevant. Basically, it's saying that technology and government are bad, while bohemianism and art are good. Nothing remotely new or groundbreaking, and that's not the point in this film. First, it's probably important to discuss De Bankole's performance. The camera is focused on him for nearly the entire time, and it studies his face and body. During the silent scenes, he is near-perfect, and, after Jarmusch's homage to Le Samourai in Ghost Dog, it's hard not to compare him to Delon's protagonist in Melville's masterpiece. Then he occasionally opens his mouth, and these moments aren't as good. His dialogue isn't that great, but he doesn't do too much with what he gets. Still, the physical nature of his performance is fantastic. There's also the music. Jarmusch uses a post-rock score to perfection, and the film picks up whenever the music starts.
However the real star of this film is Christopher Doyle's cinematography. In my opinion, Doyle deserves to be mentioned in at least the same category as Roger Deakins and Emmanual Lubezki, arguably the two most well-known working cinematographers among most film buffs (with good reason). To quote a friend of mine, Wong Kar Wai's masterful "In The Mood for Love will make your eyes cum rainbows," and Doyle's photography is a huge part of it. While The Limits of Control may not reach that level of beauty, it is still a fantastic looking film. The shots of the actors and settings, using great lighting and Jarmusch's standard lingering pauses, pull the audience in and allow us to look around if we're not in love with what's happening on screen, although many of these pauses do last a bit too long. During the first part of the film, there are some shots that seemed really obviously cinematic in nature, which sort of bugged me, but Swinton's speech on beautiful images in film and dreams clears this up, and almost makes it a commentary on those shots in Jarmusch's past work (although I don't know if that's how he meant it to be seen). As we are reminded throughout the film, "reality is arbitrary," and there are moments where the color shifts, the background appears to be a bit off or the editing brings attention to itself (this last one really doesn't work too well here) that remind us of this idea.
Overall, it is an undoubtedly beautiful film, with some very good performances and great music that's hurt by an ultimately shallow premise, a bit too much lingering (and this is coming from someone who considers The Werckmeister Harmonies his favorite film, so there is a lot of lingering) and questionable editing. I wish I hadn't made this blog under a 4-star system. I don't think it's a three-and-a-half star film, but it's better than a three. Well, I guess this is where that benefit of the doubt I was talking about comes in.
Final rating (out of ****): ***1/2

X-Men Origins: Wolverine

It doesn't take much to make a film that is simply bad. A weak story, poor direction and bad acting aren't uncommon. On the other hand, it takes some kind of perverse talent to make a film that is completely and utterly useless in every single way. If the performances are good, they must be wasted, if the director has talent, he must be far over his head, if the writers know what they're doing, well, then it probably wouldn't be completely useless. X-Men Origins: Wolverine is a completely useless film. It's entire 100-minute run-time is devoted to useless exposition and bad action scenes expanding on the backstory in the far superior X2: X-Men United, which is probably my favorite non-Batman, non-Hellboy superhero movie. The actors are fine, even if some seem to phone it in and director Gavin Hood has proven to be at least somewhat talented as a filmmaker with the Oscar-winning Tsotsi, so I'm placing a lot of the blame here on the writers and the studio. The writers because, well, it's Skip Woods, whose previous credits include Swordfish and Hitman, and David Benioff, who wrote Troy and The Kite Runner. I shouldn't have expected much out of that. The studio because, well, it's Fox. When a workprint version of the film leaked a month ago, they immediately came out and said that it was incomplete, that, along with unfinished effects and musical cues, scenes were missing. This was, of course, a blatant lie. I watched the workprint, and I actually enjoyed it a bit more, because at least we could see into the process of designing special effects, although given the godawful effects in Wolverine, maybe it wasn't the best place to learn (if anyone is wondering why I saw it again after disliking the workprint, I wanted to take a break from studying for finals, a friend asked me to go and I figured the updated effects may help). Here's a little hint for Fox: incomplete effects cannot make up for shallow, dull characters, complete failure in terms of emotional connection and an idiotic plot that spends large portions of time trying to retcon with the first X-Men film and ends with giving its character amnesia, just to make sure.
In a laughably bad (more so than the rest of the film), opening sequence, we discover that James (Wolverine) and Victor (Sabertooth) are brothers who grew up in 1860s Canada. Somehow they move to America and stop growing at arbitrary ages (apparently those of Hugh Jackman and Liev Schreiber), fight in all our wars and eventually join a team of other mutants (one of the only things I liked about this film was seeing Dominic Monaghan and Kevin Durand, who, played Charlie and Keamy respectively on Lost, on a team together). The team does bad things and James leaves and decides to call himself Logan. He works as a lumberjack in Canada for a few years and lives with his girlfriend. They seem happy, but the dialogue between them is so cliche and uninteresting that I just didn't care. Victor starts killing old members of the team because, shocker, he is working for the obviously evil colonel who was directing the team in the past. Victor kills Logan's girlfriend, they fight and Logan loses, but Col. Stryker (remember, he was also the bad guy in X2) gets Wolverine to allow himself to be injected with metal to become stronger and kill Victor (we don't know that Stryker is evil yet). This is a ruse, which Logan figures out, and he escapes. While in hiding on a farm, he meets a nice old couple who give him life advice, and are then killed at the start of one of the most idiotic, cliche-riddled action sequences I've ever seen. I didn't think there were actually movies any more where people walked away from explosions without turning around or showing any reactions. Didn't that go out of style with Bad Boys? If a movie does that in a clever, self-aware or parodic way, I'm OK with it, but Wolverine is none of those things. This begins a cross-country chase, where Wolverine meets up with another former member of the team, played miserably by Will.i.am, but, no worries, he is soon killed by Victor. Logan meets with Gambit, a mutant who had been held by Stryker at his headquarters on 3-mile island (yes, it is that stupid). I think they want us to care about Gambit, but, like everyone in this film except Logan, Stryker and Victor, he only has two or three minutes of dull, wasted screentime. Somewhere in there, Victor and Stryker capture Cyclops when he is still a child (they don't even attempt to retcon this). Logan gets to the island, there is more dull action and exposition, including what is apparently a complete bastardization of the character Deadpool (I haven't read the comics, but I can imagine the fanboys being rather angry about such a dull villain taking the place of the popular character). Eventually, Stryker shoots Wolverine in the head with an Adamantium bullet, which apparently erases his memory of everything that happened in the film. Oh, also, Charles Xavier (an unintentionally hilarious de-aged Patrick Stewart) shows up in a cameo to rescue young Cyclops and the other mutants from the island.
I guess I should mention the one...not bad thing about this film (I really don't want to use the word "good" in relation to this garbage). The actors, especially Jackman and Schreiber are fine. Their roles are awful, but that's more of a script thing than anything. Otherwise, there really isn't a single way in which this film succeeds. The plot is idiotic and useless (I think I'm going to watch X2 right now, just so I can remember that this story can be told well), none of the supporting characters are given more than five minutes of screentime and whatever attempts at development go on in that time invariably fail. The dialogue is cliched and obvious beyond belief and the film's attempts at emotional connection (Logan and his girlfriend, the old couple on the farm and Logan and Victor's eventual, inexplicable reconciliation) are beyond laughable. Last, and arguably most important in a film like this (a superhero film without aspirations to be something more, like Dark Knight and Watchmen), is just how fucking dull the action scenes are. Seriously, the exposition in between was pointless and kind of stupid, but the action sequences range from boring (the fight between Logan and Gambit) to purely idiotic (the chase scene after Logan's escape). I wasn't expecting Dark Knight, X2 or Hellboy 2 levels of greatness, but I also wasn't expecting Ghost Rider, Fantastic 4 or Catwoman levels of trash, and that's what this is.
Rating (out of ****): *1/2

State Of Play

Let's go back eight years. Imagine that, in April 2001, Russel Crowe and Ben Affleck had opened a well-received political thriller with an impeccable source material and a popular, talented supporting cast featuring multiple recent Oscar nominees. It would have opened at number one and people would be talking about it for a while. Crowe was coming off of his Oscar win for the wildly successful Gladiator, and he was quickly becoming one of the most popular and respected leading men in Hollywood and Affleck was still a super star. Unfortunately for director Kevin MacDonald, Universal and the stars, State Of Play is not being released in 2001. Since then, Crowe has one more Oscar, but a series of personal mishaps and mediocre films (plus an added forty or fifty pounds) have taken away from his stardom, although he remains a very good actor. For Affleck, April 2001 would be a month before the wreck that was Pearl Harbor and two years before Gigli was unleashed on an unsuspecting public, effectively killing his career for a while. Since then, he has managed to calm down his personal life and regain some respect in Hollywood, both as an actor and director, but he is nowhere near the powerhouse he was at the beginning of the decade. I say all of this because, while watching this film, I couldn't help but think about the cycle of power in Hollywood, and how odd it was that these former titans were staring in a pretty good film that not many people will see (hopefully I'm wrong and it does well).
Crowe plays Cal McAffrey, a Washington Globe (I assume they couldn't use a real paper) reporter lost in the digital age. After a quick look at a seemingly unconnected murder, he hears about the apparent suicide of Sonia Baker, an aid to his college roommate, Congressman Collins, played by Affleck (never mind the fact that Crowe looks at least ten years older than his costar). Despite some objection from his editor, Cameron Lynn (played wonderfully by Helen Mirren), he begins working with young Blog writer Della Frye (Rachel McAdams) and starts to fit the pieces together (in here, he meets a medical examiner played by Viola Davis, presumably before her breakout role in Doubt). It begins to look like Sonia's murder was planned by PointCorp, a private military corporation that Collins has been investigating (unfortunately, here the plot really resembles the latest season of 24). In there is a somewhat unnecessary side plot about Cal's affair with Collins' wife, played by Robin Wright Penn. Despite the abilities of the actors, it just doesn't feel right in the film and could easily have been cut. As everything begins to come together, Cal and Della visit with Dominic Foy, a PR man played by Jason Batemen, who proves that he can excel in the right role. There are two twists ahead, one painfully obvious one involving the congressman played by Jeff Daniels (sure he's a good actor, but he doesn't really need to be here) and the second, only slightly less obvious one, involving a shadowy character we've seen a few times throughout.
Getting back to my question at the beginning, I should probably note that this is not a film that could have come out in 2001. There are three main issues at work here that are a huge part of our world today. Two are very much in the public eye and one is well known in certain circles. First is the line of journalistic integrity. There are multiple scenes questioning the morality of the interactions between journalists and police. These scenes are rather obvious in their nature, and I assume they played a stronger role in the beloved original BBC miniseries, which I have not seen. Next is the issue of Blackwater-style private armies. The issue is more of a MacGuffin in the context of the film, but it does exist. once again, it is somewhat heavy-handed, and I've been watching the same thing on 24 for weeks. The third issue, and the one that resonates most with me as a communications student, is that of the changing nature of the news industry. At the very beginning, we see a new "Mediacorp" ownership sign in the paper. The corporate masters control what prints in the paper, and the bloggers are seen to be more powerful and in vogue. Cal's Woodward and Bernstein-style reporting is seen as archaic and slow in the modern world (Woodward, along with other well-known news figures, appears in a cameo as a background reporter during a press conference).
As for the film itself, it isn't perfect. Neither twist is particularly unique or unexpected and some scenes fall flat, but the tension is there when it has to be and it makes a pretty good point about the news industry. The performances are all pretty good (especially Crowe, McAdams and Mirren) and the script is interesting when it needs to be. It looks a bit too slick at moments, but the direction is certainly competent, and there are a few really good shots (a certain sequence in a parking garage and the final confrontation come to mind). It's not a great film, but it's a good thriller that's elevated by its great cast.
Rating (out of ****): ***

Tokyo!

The trailer for Tokyo! asks us the film's essential question: "Do we shape cities, or do cities shape us?" The three parts of the film, each by a different director, all answer the question in their own way. The three sections all take place in a very modern Tokyo and, aside from the aforementioned question, deal with transformation, anarchy and rebirth, respectively. The first (and best) segment is "Interior Design," directed by Michel Gondry of Eternal Sunshine fame. The second, Merde, is directed by Leos Carax, who also made Lovers On The Bridge and Pola X. The final segment, Shaking Tokyo, was created by Bong Joon-ho, most famous for The Host. I think I have to rate the films on their own, but as an overall experience, Tokyo is a must-see. Everything comes together to form a beautiful portrait of the city, and a far more authentic one than the type allowed by an anthology like Paris je t'aime.
Gondry's opening segment, Interior Design, is about a young couple who move to Tokyo for their careers. The husband is an aspiring filmmaker, but his work is extremely dense and comically overwrought (the sequences of his film that we do see are probably the funniest moments in the film), and it only plays in a porn theater. His wife is even less assured. She can't find work and she loses the car. They are staying with a friend, but she wants to get rid of them, even though it's impossible to find suitable housing. The husband seems happy, and people are seeing his film. Eventually, the wife begins to disappear in the city, between the walls. Then she turns into a chair. I'm sorry if that's a bit spoilery, but I rarely get to write "then she turns into a chair." It vaguely reminds me of my last paper on The Metamorphosis. This film shows a more restrained Gondry than normal (yes, even with the chair thing). His wild, innovative visuals made Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind an instant classic, but they didn't work as well on or The Science Of Sleep or Be Kind Rewind. Until the end, this is simply a very good looking film (although not the best looking of the three). Even the effects showing her transformation aren't the focus. Interior Design is the lightest of the three films, and it makes a great introduction to the tone of the film and to the city itself.
Leos Carax's Merde is the strangest part of Tokyo by a fairly large margin (yes, that includes the chair thing and the robot pizza man in the third one). I haven't seen any of Carax's other work. I assume they don't all concentrate on sewer-people running around cities terrorizing people. You probably couldn't maintain a respected career on that premise. Merde opens with a fantastic tracking shot showing the main character (eventually named Merde) running down the sidewalk and just generally bothering people. He pushes them, steals their money and cigarettes, eats their flowers and just generally makes them uncomfortable. He is hideous and mumbling in an incoherent language. Next we see him running through the sewers where he finds some grenades, which lead to another fantastic sequence. After this, the film goes down a bit in terms of quality. A lawyer who looks exactly like him and speaks the language flies in from France to represent him at his eventual trial, and the rest of the segment deals with his trial and sentencing while the rest of the country riots in his support and defense. Some of these moments have a rather unpleasant feel to them. I can't think of a good way to describe them aside from that, but they just felt a bit off. The word that it is tagged with is anarchy, but I think it deals more with language barriers, Japanese nationalism and parodying Godzilla (especially in the opening and closing moments). The Godzilla stuff probably works best, but overall it's still a fun time, just not so much in the second half.
The final segment, Bong Joon-ho's Shaking Tokyo, is far less funny than the others, but is also the best looking of the three. I have not seen Bong's extremely successful film The Host, but his 2003 film Memories of Murder is one of the best procedurals I've ever seen (it's better than the very similar Zodiac) and helped kick off what has been a brilliant decade for Korean cinema. The film is about a Hikkomori (a type of shut-in that has become a large issue in recent years in Japan) who has not left his home in ten years. His father sends him money and he subsists off of delivery food, especially pizza. One day, as his pizza is being delivered, an earthquake strikes, and the beautiful delivery girl falls unconscious. He tries to help her without contact, but eventually he sees a tattoo of a power button (like on an X-box) that says coma. He presses it and she wakes up and observes the odd perfection of his OCD-like collections of pizza boxes. This causes her to become a shut-in as well. The man decides that he has to find her and ventures outside for the first time in years. When he gets outside, he discovers that everyone else has gone inside. The only thing he sees is a pizza-delivery robot. After another quake, everyone runs outside and he finds her, and another button makes her stay. This segment is about rebirth. The story is the most conventional, but it's simply a beautiful film. Every shot is well-framed and carefully considered, creating a fascinating beauty in the clutter of the man's home.
So, do we shape cities, or do they shape us? Well, Interior Design, seems to come down on them shaping us. The characters change (in many ways) when they get to Tokyo, and the wife is "shaped" into something completely different. Merde's lead character certainly shapes his city. A cult forms around him and parts of Tokyo descend into anarchy. Shaking Tokyo is somewhere in between. Hikkomoris are a trend in Tokyo, and the stresses of the city are probably to blame, but the man certainly shapes the world around him. I think that's why it was shown last, even though the tonal shift seems a bit off when they go from two comedies to a drama. Overall, while it may not be completely consistent, Tokyo! is a wonderful look at the city and the people that make it.
Rating (out of ****) ***1/2

Hunger

It's been a pretty decent couple of years for Ireland in film. First came the palm d'or winner The Wind That Shakes The Barley (a very good film, although it was the only English language film I've ever needed subtitles for), the the delightful musical Once and now, the best of the three, Steve McQueen's Hunger. This is the story of Bobby Sands and the hunger strike he organized at HM prison Maze in order to get IRA members treated as political prisoners. This is a brutal, uncompromising look at the strike, its causes and its effects. McQueen (I can't believe this is his real name) is a well-known, award-winning visual artist making his feature film debut here. The fact that the director is an actual artist is something you should keep in mind during this film. The framing on nearly every shot is clearly the work of a meticulous worker (while he doesn't take this to Kubrickesque levels, there are a couple shots, especially in the hallways of the prison that remind me of Kubrick). Playing Sands is Michael Fassbender, who has had a few small roles in the past, but nothing of this magnitude.
As the film opens, we see a man look into a mirror and wash off his bloody knuckles. We don't know who he is at the time, but we later find out that he is a guard at the prison. He isn't a terrible guy, but we see him do bad things. His final scene is one of the most disturbing I've seen in recent years, but that doesn't come for a while. After we see him go through his day, a new prisoner comes in and refuses to wear his uniform. He is marked as insubordinate, and is forced to strip naked (this movie is not at all shy about nudity) before putting on a blanket (it was part of an ongoing protest). He gets to his cell and discovers that his cellmate had been smearing his shit on the walls as part of another ongoing protest. He doesn't seem to mind, and eventually joins in, but soon the guards come to wash them off. This is where we first meet Bobby. They drag him, kicking and screaming, from his cell, cut his hair and make him into a bloody mess. Even though he is the main character, this doesn't happen until thirty minutes into the film, although nearly no dialogue had been spoken through that point. Next, we get a virtuoso sequence in which, following a small riot, the guards march the prisoners out, send them through a gauntlet of baton-wielding riot police and then have them cavity searched, on-by-one, by a guy who never takes off his gloves. A large part of this is done in one take. Bobby is brutally beaten for not allowing the guards to search him, and we see the psychological effects of this on the guard who is forced to hit him. We don't really sympathize, but it's something. Next, after another moment of shocking violence, we get the film's centerpiece. Bobby has decided to organize a hunger strike, but unlike failed ones of the past, he organizes it so that they will die if their demands aren't met. Bobby lays all of this out in a seventeen minute conversation with a priest played by Liam Cunningham. What makes this conversation so notable is that the entire 17 minutes is done in a single take where the camera never moves. This is supposedly the longest single take in any feature film. After this, we flash to a few weeks later, and we see Bobby whithering down. There is little dialogue near the end, but the physical transformation is tremendous. Fassbender does a fantastic job of expressing every little emotion and pain that he must go through. We know from the outset that Bobby dies, but the brutality of the whole thing is shocking. Did he really accomplish anything? Was he a martyr or a rabble-rouser just trying to start a civil war?
I don't know Bela Tarr's viewing habits, but if he watched this film I'm sure he was proud. The master of the long take's old joke that the 12 minute reel is a form of censorship seems to have been disproved (I'm not entirely sure how they did it). The 17 minute conversation, despite simply being a static camera focused on two men is one of the most charged and tense in recent years. it speaks mainly to the immense talents of the two actors, but also to the film around it. Before this take, there had been very little dialogue. In fact, I'd say at least 75% of the dialogue in the 90 minute film comes in this one take. It's so new and unexpected that we get dragged in and we never leave. The conversation switches between comic statements on the nature of the priesthood to questions of the morality of Bobby's actions with ease, and we completely buy it. Fassbender and Cunningham lived together for weeks, rehearsing 15-20 times a day, to be able to get everything just right, and its worth it.
Like The Wind That Shakes The Barley, this film may be a little to obvious in its politics. The use of Margret Thatcher sound-clips may be a bit over the top, but that film's biggest failing was its complete lack of humanization of the British. here' we know that the guard at the beginning probably isn't a bad guy, and the guard who beats Sands is distraught over it. It isn't much, but acknowledging the humanity of the other side is an important step to avoid seeming to flat and one-sided. The film's final moments have also drawn some criticism, with some saying that the final moments make him too much of a Christ-like figure, but that was set up from the beginning (his long hair and beard at the beginning are very reminiscent of The Passion), so I don't really mind. This film sets up McQueen as a filmmaker to watch and will hopefully draw attention to the issues in Ireland. Whatever side you're on, they aren't finished yet.
Rating (Out of ****): ****

Made in USA

Has any other director ever had a burst of creativity like Jean-Luc Godard in the sixties? Starting with Breathless, moving through Vivre Sa Vie, Bande a Part, Alphaville (his masterpiece in my opinion), Contempt, Masculin Feminin and ending with Week End (with eight or nine other films mixed in there for good measure), this burst of creativity forever changed cinema across the world. A film from that period which has always been lost in the shuffle is 1966's Made in USA. It was never released in America because Godard never paid for the rights to adapt the book it was based on, he just did it, and, due to the subsequent legal action, Made in USA never came to the USA. Thankfully, the Boston Museum of Fine Arts decided to include it in their ongoing series on Godard in the 60's and I was able to go. I hope this means the legal issues have been resolved and Criterion can get their hands on this, because this is a film that deserves a wider audience. It is just as deserving of high praise as any other film on that list.

Godard's muse/wife Anna Karina plays Paula Nelson, who travels to Atlantic City (which, for the sake of this film, is in France) to visit her lover Richard, only to discover that he has died under mysterious circumstances. She runs into an old associate of theirs named Typhus, who she quickly knocks out and dumps in his own room, which allows her to meet his nephew David, who is a very strange writer, and his Japanese fiance. As she investigates Richard's death, the police discover that someone has killed Typhus, and things begin to spin out of control. I'm going to stop the plot description here because it would be utterly pointless to go on. Like The Big Sleep, which was a heavy influence on this film, the plot becomes too much to actually explain. I know it is a political thriller has something to to with communism, but that's pretty irrelevant aside from the fact that, at this point, Godard sure loved his communism. They never really explain why most of the things that happen happen, so you're best off just going along for the ride.

Godard was famous for saying that all he needed to make a movie was "a girl and a gun." Karina is the perfect girl for him. Taking on a rather Bogart-esque role, she looks perfect in the requisite trench-coat and the wear and tear of starring in so many films in such a short period of time gives her the perfect look for someone in her line of work, whatever that may be. She also delivers the film's best line "we were in a political movie-Walt Disney with blood" with a perfect amount of irony and anger in her voice. As that line implies, this film is almost comically self-aware, although it stops before it hits pure comedy, which would just seem out of place in a Godard film. The other aspects you'd expect are also there. We get characters named after American pop-culture icons (two henchmen named Richard Nixon and Robert MacNamara), wonderfully jarring mid-scene edits and tons of guns and trench coats. Although, in some ways it is different from the traditional Godard-fare. It was only his third color feature, and the cinematography from Raoul Coutard, who worked on many of Goadard's films is just fantastic.

There is a fascinating paradox inherent to this work. Godard spends much of the film decrying the spread of western culture, calling advertising a form of fascism, but he is obsessed with that same culture. Would he exist without American gangsters? I'm not sure. It may not even matter, but it is something to think about. Hopefully you'll think about it while watching this film.

Rating (out of ****): ****

Coraline

I'll be the first to admit that I'm not a huge fan of the recent proliferation of 3D films. I think many of the films using it are too gimmicky and use it to make up for lack of a story. Henry Selick's Coraline thankfully manages to avoid this. Selick, who was previously best known as the answer to the trivia question, "who really directed The Nightmare Before Christmas?" does a good job of adapting the popular Neil Gaiman novella, and he uses the power of 3D technology to perfection, creating what is bound to be remembered one of the most beautiful films of the year. Selick and his team combined the stop-motion animation of Nightmare and Corpse Bride with some CGI to create two very unique worlds. The film is not perfect, but it is probably the best 3D film in recent years.
In the beginning, a young girl named Coraline (voiced by Dakota Fanning) moves into a very boring new house that is filled with intriguing characters. There is Wyborn, a young boy who follows her around with his cat, two retired actresses who read her fortune and a crazed Russian who trains mice for a circus (voiced by Ian Mcshane). After fighting with her parents, Coraline finds a small door that leads into a parallel version of her world. In it, her parents are extremely nice, the actresses are still beautiful, Wyborn doesn't stalk her and the Russian is completely sane. Most importantly, everything appears to be magical. The garden in this world is probably the most visually stunning part of the film, and everything just pops out wonderfully in 3D. However, she soon realizes that all of it is a trap, and her "other mother" intends to keep her there forever. After escaping back to the real world, she finds out that her "other mother" has kidnapped her real parents, and she must go back and save them, along with the souls of other children that she had kidnapped. This if the film's weakest point. It plays out like a mission from a cheap video game, and the suspense never really works.

It's difficult to look at this film and not compare it to Nightmare Before Christmas and Corpse Bride. Aside from the obvious use of stop-motion, they tell similar stories of looking for happiness in alternate worlds. Coraline lacks the pure magic of those two, although it may be even more aesthetically pleasing. I guess it may be the fault of the original story, but the end is pretty weak, and it really offers nothing new. Still, with absolutely nothing in the pipeline until the long-awaited release of Watchmen next month, Coraline should be good enough to hold you over.

Rating (out of ****): ***

Wendy and Lucy

My next post was going to be my top twenty of 2008, but then I discovered that Kelly Reichardt's new minimalist film Wendy and Lucy opened in Boston for one week, and I decided that I should try to see as many of last year's highly acclaimed films as possible before I made any list. This film can, at least in terms of plot, be compared to Sean Penn's Into The Wild. Unlike that film, Wendy and Lucy does not seek to create a martyr for our times out of it's lead. Into The Wild did succeed, but that was because of the supporting characters and the performance of Emile Hirsch. Wendy and Lucy succeeds because we're not asked to bow to it's main character and because of the performance of Michelle Williams. Williams plays Wendy Carroll, a young woman driving from Indiana to Alaska with her beloved dog Lucy in search of work and a new start. We never learn much about her life before we see her, just a quick conversation with her brother-in-law. As the film picks up, Wendy and Lucy walk through the woods, taking a break from their long journey, only to meet a group of similar lost souls. Later that night, she stops her car in a Walgreen's parking lot and in the morning, after being woken up by a kind security guard, she finds that it won't start. The mechanic is closed, so she decides to go pick up some food for Lucy. Running low on cash, she has to steal and is caught by a self-righteous grocery store employee. It becomes clear that he is an evangelical Christian, and with his warped, evil view of religion, he convinces his manager that he must call the cops. When she is released, she runs back to the store where she'd tied up Lucy and discovers that the dog is gone. Despite help from the pound, she can't seem to find her, and she discovers that her car repairs will cost much more than expected. One night, while sleeping in the woods, a man comes to her and talks about the people he's killed. He doesn't do anything, and in all likelihood, he may be lying, but it helps clarify her situation. As her economic situation falls deeper into despair, Wendy realizes that she has lost control, and no longer has any idea what she must do, before coming to an extraordinarily difficult decision regarding her future.

Many reviews have discussed the film's political message about the plight of the marginalized people in today's society, but it's moral message is far more important. Outside of Wendy, there are only two good characters in this film, the woman at the dog pound (who is really just doing her job) and the security guard who helps her when he can, and even his flaws appear at the end. The religious grocery store worker, the cops, the mechanic and the insane man who speaks to Wendy may occasionally do her or someone else a favor, but they are not good people. The real question of this film is what do we owe each other as human beings? The film's answer is that we should give what we can. Even the difficult decision that Wendy must make at the end fits into this answer.

The film's strongest point is Michelle Williams' inexplicably snubbed performance as Wendy. She appears in nearly every frame of this eighty minute film, and her performance is the dominant feature of all of them. Wendy is not street smart, and she does not completely understand the world around her, and Williams perfectly captures that idea. A film portraying the outsiders in our modern world just works better if shot in a more natural minimalist style, which made Reichardt, who also directed the critically acclaimed Old Joy a perfect director for this piece. Instead of the sweeping vista's we'd normally expect from this sort of film, we get smaller shots of the real west, of the people who inhabit it and the emptiness around them. If the film has one flaw, it's that the story itself really isn't that great. The film gets by on style and character, but it has a rather standard story that we've all seen before. This alone could leave some people feeling underwhelmed, but they should not feel that way. Wendy and Lucy may not be the classic that some are calling it, but it is one of the better films of 2008.

Rating (out of ****): ***1/2

Best of 2008

OK, I wanted to wait until I'd seen The Class, and now that I have, here's my top 25 of 2008.

25. Hellboy 2: The Golden Army -The year's second best superhero film only further showcases Del Toro's brilliance when it comes to visuals, even if the story is somewhat absurd.

24. The Fall- Yes, this film is highly flawed, and most of the scenes in the hospital only take away from the story itself, but it also features some of the best visuals in any film of this or any year.

23. The Band's Visit- This is one of the two Israeli films on my list this year, and while it wasn't quite as powerful as the other (I think you know what it is), this simple, lighthearted story has a lot to say about the idea of peace and friendship in the middle east. This is a film that everyone should see, just to understand what it's like over there, because this is very realistic.

22. Religulous- Bill Maher's mockumentary on religion is not for everyone, and many will find his style abrasive, but this film is constantly hilarious and has an important message.

21. Pineapple Express- This is one of the funniest films the Appatow crew has put out, although it still wasn't able to live up to the trailer (http://www.funnyordie.com/videos/6f25e84ca3/pineapple-express-red-band-trailer-from-judd-apatow-james-franco-and-seth-rogen), which is one of the funniest I've ever seen. Franco was fantastic, and he earned that golden globe nomination. David Gordon Green's visual talents may be somewhat underused, but this is still by far the best looking Appatow film.

20. Gran Torino- Sure, the supporting actors were a joke, and the story wasn't exactly unique, but two hours of Clint Eastwood making racist jokes is far more entertaining than it had any right to be.

19. Revolutionary Road- Great performances highlight Sam Mendes' look at suburban disillusionment. Winslet's best actress nomination should have come from here, and Michael Shannon's best supporting actor nod is much appreciated. The only issue is that the whole thing winds up feeling a bit too cold and intellectual at certain points.

18. Wendy and Lucy- Kelly Reichart's heartbreaking minimalist commentary on the American economy gets by on Michelle Williams fantastic performance, which may have been this year's strongest from a leading actress.

17. Burn After Reading- A decent Coen Brothers film is still better than most other things. While it lacks the depth of No Country, and the pure entertainment value of Big Lebowski, it is a fun film filled with fantastic performances from the A-list cast.

16. Man On Wire- One of this year's best documentaries is a fascinating heist tale and a beautiful remembrance of the world trade center. This is the best reviewed film of all time according to Rottentomatoes.com

15. In Bruges- The "hitmen having an existential crisis" genre has been done to death since Pulp Fiction. This is the first time that it's been done well. Great performances, great direction and a wonderful screenplay elevated this thriller far beyond the normal constraints of the sub-genre

14. Wall-E- This incredibly adorable film is one of the best Pixar has ever done. The second half is a bit of a drop off, but the first half is as good as anything else this year.

13. Vicky Christina Barcelona- This incredibly sexy and entertaining film is Allen's best in years. Bardem continues his winning streak, Cruz and Hall are perfect and Scarlett Johanson...looks really good. Allen perfectly captures the feelings of Spain.

12. Milk- This timely film is loaded with great performances, especially from Penn, Franco and Hirsch. Although it sticks to many conventions of the traditional bio-pic, it works perfectly inside these conventions, giving us a heartbreaking true story.

11. Trouble The Water- This underseen nominee for best documentary tells a stirring tale of survival after Katrina. Using large amounts of footage shot on the ground by aspiring rapper Kimberly Rivers-Roberts and her husband Scott, this is a tale of redemption and a commentary on the lack of anything resembling support that the Bush administration gave to the poor people of New Orleans.

10. Snow Angels- David Gordon Green's depressing story of small-town life boasts great performances from Sam Rockwell and Kate Beckinsale. It is visually brilliant, heartbreaking, and as powerful as any other film this year.

9 . Encounters At The End of The World- Werner Herzog is my hero. Him bringing his act down to Antarctica and combining it with stunning nature photography leads to one of the year's best documentaries

8. Let The Right One In- This coming of age vampire story is, by a rather large margin, the strongest horror film in years. There are a couple missteps (the CGI cats just look stupid), but great performances and fantstic visuals, as well as a generally creepy story that doesn't rely on gore or cheap jump scares elevate it far bayond the normal constraints of the genre.

7. The Class- Now, I haven't seen L'enfant, but based on what I have seen, this is probably the strongest winner of the Palm d'or since at The Pianist back in 2002. Leaving behind the constrains of the traditional heartwarming film about teachers in the inner city, this is a realistic look at life in a poor Parisian school. The students hate the teachers, the teachers can't deal with the students and the parents are stuck in between. Shot with hand-held style footage and featuring great performances from writer François Bégaudeau and most of the kids in the class, this really is one of the year's strongest efforts.

6. The Curious Case of Benjamin Button- David Fincher's fantasy is the strongest of the best picture nominees and his best film since Se7en. Yes, there are similarities to Forrest Gump, but this film has better performances, fantastic visuals far more interesting themes of life and death and is less sappy and overly sentimental.

5. Rachel Getting Married- Jonathon Demme's best film in years fully immerses us in the lives of it's characters, especially Kym, played to perfection by Anne Hathaway. Some have criticized it as being too slow. I don't really like those people.

4. Waltz with Bashir- Ari Folman's animated documentary was the best foreign film, animated film and documentary of 2008. This movie looks great, has a fascinating score and does a great job exploring the themes of war and memory. It's still in theaters, so see it.

3. The Dark Knight- This is the best superhero film of all time. I don't think it's even close (hell, I'd probably call Hellboy 2 the second best superhero film, so here's a good look at the gap). Nolan's slick visuals, a smarter-than-average script and the best supporting performance of the year from the late, great Heath Ledger are what really pulled this up onto that level and made it a modern masterpiece that will be discussed for years to come.

2. The Wrestler- Aronofsky's best film yet is also his most personal. Mickey Rourke is on screen for almost every second, and he has the perfect combination of ability and charisma to pull it off in one of the year's best performances. Marisa Tomei and Evan Rachel Wood also shine in supporting roles, but Rourke is the star here. Also, Springsteen's title track was absurdly snubbed in favor of two songs from that piece of shit Slumdog Millionaire. Really?

1. Synecdoche, New York- the year's best film has it's best script, leading performance and supporting actress (Samantha Morton). Unfortunately, the academy didn't quite get it. Just go back and read my original review. My opinion hasn't changed.